Word: fella
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...whose star shines in the musical-comedy sky right now, you can bet it'll be Frank Loesser. Though the songwriter died in 1969, his work is enjoying a burgeoning revival. Last week Loesser's "musical with a lotta music," The Most Happy Fella (1956), opened to bravos and bouquets at the New York City Opera in Lincoln Center. A more intimate version of Fella will come to Broadway later this season, as will Loesser's damn-near-immortal Guys and Dolls (1950). This summer's straw-hat circuit was brightened by Where's Charley? (1948), starring Loesser's widow...
...couldn't happen to a more deserving fella. Loesser would tell you that. As brash as any gravel-gargling high roller from Guys and Dolls, he was famous for telling his singers, "Loud is good," and he applied that maxim to his professional life. For Loesser, a song was melodrama in miniature: he loved the counterpoint of two hearts and voices in seductive competition, as in Baby, It's Cold Outside and many other contentious duets. They were an expression of his own tumultuous personality. During Guys and Dolls rehearsals, exasperated by Isabel Bigley's tentative attempts...
...MOST HAPPY FELLA. Frank Loesser's Napa Valley fable, done along operatic lines well before Andrew Lloyd Webber came along, has been a cult icon since its 1956 Broadway production. New York City Opera has a new staging. It stars Louis Quilico as the middle-aged lover of a pert mail-order bride...
...this should be so is difficult to understand. Clancy's plot may be charitably described as complex, although "cluttered" or "give me a break" also come to mind. Ryan meets with White House officials awestruck by his brainpower. "I've heard of still waters running deep, fella," the National Security Adviser tells Ryan. "But never this deep." The Middle East comes up for discussion, and Ryan opines that the main problem in the area is . . . religion. The White House boys are dazzled. No one, apparently, has ever seen the conflict between Jews and Muslims in this light. Religion? And then...
...MOST HAPPY FELLA. A Frank Loesser minifestival seems to be under way with a superb staging of this musical drama about a mail-order bride at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam and another planned at the New York City Opera, and with a revival of his Guys and Dolls that is scheduled to open on Broadway next spring...